Sanitation needs smart investment

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's clarion call to make India 'Swacch Bharat' found many takers in the country with the top corporate houses making investments to support the construction of toilets in households and schools.

Major companies like TCS, Bharti, HUL, Aditya Birla Group, ITC, Adani and Dabur have announced big Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) spends and promised to upgrade existing programmes for building sanitation facilities.

However, an analysis of the commitments made by different corporates reveals that the focus is on the construction of toilets. Studies have shown that infrastructure without commensurate investment on demand generation and behaviour change has not been sustainable.

Importantly, beneficiaries of infrastructure subsidies don’t usually change their behaviour towards sanitation and hygiene and have little incentive to maintain the toilets.

Incidentally in India there is a 'slippage' reported in the sanitation sector and more than a crore of toilets are defunct and not in use.

Corporates interesting in investing in sanitation must include funding interventions at the community level that sensitize households about the correlation between sanitation and health, hygiene and human dignity.

Corporates need to develop and adopt an accepted protocol on behaviour change financing for sanitation and hygiene based on proof and cost analysis.

They must demonstrate to governments and other stakeholders with clear and concrete evidence that software approaches are no longer a soft option for dealing with the Indian sanitation crisis.

Meanwhile, Sarva Mitra Sharma, Founder Chairman and Chief Advisory, Pehel & Group Advisor to the Board of Dainik Jagran will participate as esteemed speaker in India Toilet Summit – among many prominent personalities associated with the cause – being organized by India CSR in New Delhi on February 6, 2015.

His talk will focus on Jagran Pehel initiative on Sanitation in Bihar. Jagran Pehel has partnered with Department of PHED, Government of Bihar for implementing a large scale advocacy and behavior change campaign on ‘Ganga Action Plan’ across 108 gram panchayats in the state.